Professionals and consultants working within the enterprise or across a client base deal with a great deal of knowledge. They use their skills and expertise to apply this knowledge to particular situations, thereby improving quality, productivity, efficiency and resource utilisation - ultimately adding value for stakeholders of the enterprise.
As a long time knowledge-based consultancy group working in the areas of strategy, architectures, program management and methods, we have developed EVA, a software tool specifically to support the kinds of activities undertaken by planners, architects, business engineers, project managers, methods implementers and other knowledge intensive professional roles.
EVA has three major components:
- EVA server which provides the core functionality, manages the repository and knowledge assets on the server while providing a web based interface to all functionality
- EVA Graphical Modeler which provides a web based graphical modeling tool which supports standard modeling notations (e.g. BPMN, IDEF, UML) as well as unique and customised ones
- EVA Visio Integration which allows bi-directional exchange of models with Microsoft Visio
EVA supports multiple concurrent users and is implemented as a server product behind a standard web server (e.g. IIS™, Apache™, Websphere™) while storing repository information in a conformant relational database management system (e.g. SQL Server™, Oracle™, DB2™). Users need only a workstation and standard recent generation web browser (e.g. Microsoft Information Explorer 6, Firefox 2) to access all capabilities of the product.
EVA is extremely flexible and can be adapted for various applications by loading or extending the meta model and other elements via the concept of metasets. A metaset contains meta model constructs, model types, spatial maps and methods content to support a particular application of the product. Typical applications of EVA include:
- Enterprise Architecture where it enables distributed collaborative modeling of all domains including business, process, applications, information and technical architecture
- Strategic Planning where it facilitates alignment between business and information technology
- Initiative Management where it links strategy and architecture to projects and programmes
- In addition, EVA can support specific frameworks/methods, including:
- TOGAF (see TOGAF metaset)
- COBIT (see COBIT metaset)
- MSP (see MSP metaset)
Being web based, standards based and collaborative as well as extremely easy to adapt, integrate or extend, EVA generates many benefits for the user community and client organization, including:
- Easy implementation
- Quick and painless deployment
- Low cost of ownership
- No central bottleneck for modeling or update
- Wide distribution of architecture knowledge
- High participation of stakeholders across the organization
- Framework, method and notations of choice
- Easy data gathering via CSV, XML, web forms and graphical modeling
- Integrated analysis and reporting
- Simple portals and intranet integration
- Freestanding website generation
- Integration to implementation activity
- Inter-operation with other tools (two way Microsoft Visio integration available)
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